Total pages in book: 173
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169266 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 846(@200wpm)___ 677(@250wpm)___ 564(@300wpm)
Kat. Who taught me how to kill anyone by using a garrote when I was barely an adult and new to the game. Who never talked about her past but sometimes, late at night, would listen to Chopin and talk about how much she missed her mother back in Russia. Who saved my life many times, without any fanfare.
Gone.
Because of me.
Because I got too close to Nate. I let this mission get personal. And I was arrogant enough to think I could play a giant tech conglomerate and win.
The odds weren’t in my favor.
“Now then.” Julia grabs a folding chair and drags it across the concrete, the sound grating my ears, then stops a safe distance away before settling into it, crossing her legs, perfectly at ease. “Let’s talk about something more interesting. Let’s talk about him.”
I force myself to focus. To compartmentalize the way I have been taught, to push the grief down into that box again, wrapping it up in chains.
“Nate,” Julia says. She doesn’t sound so bored anymore. “You’ve spent quite a bit of time with my asset. Tell me, what did you think of him?”
“He’s a good fuck,” I say, knowing that’s something she’ll never have. The words come out slurred through my split lip. “That’s about it.”
“Don’t be crude,” she admonishes me, and from the way she’s holding her mouth, I can tell I hit a nerve. “He’s not some plaything for you to use and discard. He’s a masterpiece. My masterpiece. Ten years of work, Ms. Reeves, even before I laid eyes on him. All those years of selecting, shaping, perfecting. Every aspect of who he is, I designed. His values. His loyalties. His desperate need to protect.” Her eyes glint in the fluorescent light, looking almost feverish. “Do you have any idea what it takes to build a man from nothing? To create something that powerful and keep it under control?”
There’s a fervor in her voice now that wasn’t there before. The mask slipping, just a little. Enough that I can see the obsession underneath, a place I can poke at.
“He didn’t come from nothing and you didn’t create him,” I say. “You just broke him and rebuilt the pieces.”
The lady is fast. In a second she’s out of her chair and her palm is cracking across my already ruined cheek. The pain is almost secondary to the shock of seeing her lose that perfect composure.
“He was broken when I met him,” she hisses, her face inches from mine before she realizes she’s too close and backs up. “I saved him. I made him. Every part. And you think you can just waltz in with your tight dresses and your poisoned lips and take him from me? You think because he looked at you with those sad eyes and fucked you that it means something?”
“I think it means more than anything he can ever give you,” I say.
She sneers at me, that lip curling, and then suddenly, like she realized I’m getting under her skin, her face goes blank. She straightens up, smoothing her blouse, reassembling her mask piece by piece.
“That’s what Marsh wants too, you know.” She says it like I’m her confidant now, like we’re just two women gossiping about bad boyfriends over drinks. “To take my asset. Use him to expand Prometheus.” Her jaw tightens. “As if I’d let that happen. As if I’d let anyone take what belongs to me. He’s already trying to loan Vanguard to the US military.”
Interesting that she doesn’t want that to happen.
“I know about the trafficking,” I tell her, hoping she’ll say more. “The consciousness transfers. That you’re trying to build an army but you’re not having much success, other than Paragon.”
She gives me a curt smile. “So you do know something. Good. I guess you crashing the party at the warehouse wasn’t for nothing. That saves us time.” She stands, adjusting her cuffs. “I do align with Marsh on a few things. Prometheus is the future, Ms. Reeves, a future we are tweaking every day until one day we can create soldiers without weakness. Soldiers without mercy. Soldiers without the annoying tendency to fall in love with the enemy. Unlike someone I know.”
She lets that hang in the air for a moment, then her tone goes back to business.
“But enough about internal politics. Your little team is gone, but someone sent them. Someone in London is running this particular operation, and I want to know who.” She settles back into her chair, crossing her legs. “Your handler’s handler. The intelligence you’ve already transmitted. What London knows about Prometheus.”
I say nothing. I’ve already said too much.
“No?” She sighs as if I’m being tedious and looks at her heavy. “Keller?”
Keller comes at me with cunning smile and I know I’m the highlight of the day in his sad, pathetic life.